Things shall change.

So, I’ve planned a lot of weddings in my day. You know this. If my math is right, I think I have done something like….70.

If there is one thing planning weddings taught me about life it is this:

                Tearing it down is a whole lot easier than putting it all together.

                Things are more easily destroyed than created.

 I have been reading in Luke for what seems like months and came across this verse: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Be careful or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness, and the anxieties of life…” (Luke 21:33-34a)

Isn’t that the truth? When I see the world and how it is, no doubt, passing away, I feel the weighed down-ness. Or look at that word, “dissipation.” It comes from the root in “dissipate” and while it can also mean overindulgence, it means “to disperse.” Which makes me think of fog and how the sun burns it off. Or I think of boiling a pot of water and how it just…dissipates. Or maybe the word I connect more with is “evaporate.”

Have you ever felt like your heart just EVAPORATED inside of you? It’s so weighed down, it sees the world wasting away—dissipating, if you will—and it just evaporates. No strength left in it.

*Sigh.

I see that again this life comes to a point of trust.

Do I trust in Jesus’ words, which do not pass away, or do I trust in the world, which means that my heart evaporates right along with it?

All of this reminds me of that passage in Hebrews, though.

“In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens are the work of you hand. They will perish, but you remain;…like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years never end.” (Hebrews 1:10-12)

Don’t you just want to yell Hallelujah? For no other reason than the fact that HE REMAINS THE SAME? We change, the world changes, the times change, BUT.NOT.HIM.

Malachi 3 says “I the LORD do not change.”
Confidence. Right there. If you are looking for stability in your life, it’s Him.

But wait a second….

He does not change.
You and I do.

But aren’t we created in his image?

So….wait….does that mean….?

I think so.

Change, kids, is not a characteristic we have inherited from him.
My, how interesting.

See. When did the first change happen? At the Fall, right? Sin changed us. NO WONDER WE HATE IT SO MUCH!

Some people will say “Change is a good thing,” to which I always think, “Umm…No. But  you must be on drugs. Change is only good if it benefits you. And how often does THAT happen? How often are we happy with EVERY aspect of a change?” Almost never.

Now let me get this straight. Change is not really a characteristic of God, yet he uses it (for God uses everything for his glory- it is his trademark to redeem a matter).

Let’s break this whole change phenomenon down sequentially then. We will start at the beginning:

A.      God molded, formed, and created us perfect, in his image, and he placed us in an environment where there was no death, no decay.

B.      We chose to sin, though, and THUS were changed, deformed, made worse, wrecked.

a.       Note: Satan never does anything for the good. Case in point.

C.       Therefore, our relationship to God, each other, and our work changed.

(If for no other reason, this is proof enough that those people who say change is a good thing are wrong.

For example, here were the first big changes in the world: 1. Being alienated from God 2. Blaming your spouse 3. Having sweat and weeds and pain in childbirth and 4. Having kids who murder each other. (Genesis 3-4)

 

{this is where I yell} TELL ME WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT THAT?????????????????????????)

D.      Jesus came to offer a reversal of the change (Romans 5:10)

E.      If the gift of Jesus is accepted, Jesus capitalizes upon our wreckage, using our ability to change to his advantage as He now CHANGES us to be conformed to the likeness of him (Romans 8:29). He starts us back on the Perfecting Process (Hebrew 12:2), i.e.

F.       HE IS CREATING US AGAIN (you are a new creation in Christ- II Cor. 5:17)—and his work will have its success.

G.      I Corinthians 15:51-54 “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—  in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.  When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’”

g. The finale of the Perfecting Process looks like this:

That which CAN BE CHANGED (those of us who were wrecked) will finally be returned to a state that CANNOT BE CHANGED- and this then being a better creation (most of the first things that happened in the Bible, First covenants, first creations, first temples, first sacrifices, are only a shadow of the one to come)

H.      See, DEATH (i.e. the ability to change/ immortality) will be swallowed up in victory. Meaning that CHANGING, PERISHING, MORTALITY, etc, is the opposite of victory. This is the curse of our sin.

 AND DON’T WE HATE IT??

We hate change, we hate death, we hate rotten food—because we know that this is not how it was supposed to be.

Like time, change is not our natural habitat. That is why it grates on us, because we are foreign to it. It speaks of the eternity set in us (Ecc. 3:11).

Change, therefore, now only has a value to the believer. For those of us who have accepted Christ, we have been set on a changing-back-to-be-like-Christ-again path. We get a do-over.

But for the non-believer?
They just get closer to death. That’s the only changes they incur.

Whoa. Yikes.

No wonder why being a Christian is hard! What is easier? There is a train cruising down a hill towards the edge of the cliff. Is it easier to let it continue towards its destruction, or to stop it and then push it back up the hill—backwards?

You get the point because, remember, like all those weddings, destroying it is easier than creating it.

Wolfies, our death has to be SWALLOWED UP (II Cor. 5) This is no pain-free process. This is a creating process. Being a Christian goes against our nature.

And that’s the point.
That’s the good news.
Because our nature sends us to the grave; our nature destroys us.
Therefore, we rejoice in our sufferings: It’s undoing our death.